smokingcrabMichael Brendan Dougherty is in favor of Trumpism, but against Donald Trump. I can actually understand this, to a degree. But what raises my ire is when Dougherty and others are more excited about their correct prior diagnosis than disturbed by the actual prognosis.

Among the sillier attacks against Donald Trump are his allegedly short fingers. That works better than pointing out that he’s a national security threat, I guess? Whatever the case, it’s an accusation that really bothers him.

The ever-inspirational Chris Christie: “I wasn’t being held hostage.” He can say that all he wants, but the flood of endorsements that were supposed to follow didn’t. Nobody likes being a prisoner.

I’m not fond of linking to Uncle Steve when he’s directly talking about immigration, but his look at Merkel and Clinton contains some good analysis.

Gretchen explains how her life became restricted when she married a sex offender, affecting everything from where they live, whether they should have children, and perhaps where they can travel internationally.

Florida is stepping up enforcement against left-lane snails.

As a Twitter follower, I’ve seen directly Bethany Mandel attract the hate mobs of Breitbart, and it’s not pretty. It’s even creeped on to Facebook.

Mankind’s greatest enemy: The white man.

Too many movies fail the Bechdel Test, so some scripts are up for a rewrite.

The New York Times looks at some of the changes in store for Sesame Street under HBO management. Not sure I like the changes, but it is what it is I suppose.

Something that cuts against arguments right and left, Freddie points out that most PhD’s are doing pretty well, actually.

Bradley Birzer reviews a John J Miller story The Polygamous King, which sounds fascinating.

Emily Badger says cities haven’t run out of room so much as they’re shoo-ing away potential neighbors.

I haven’t read the paper, but the idea of conferring automatic relationship status on couples that have kids together strikes me as the law back home that says young girls who get pregnant can become emancipated from their parents early. Some added diceyness to incentives for gents and ladies who want to hold on to their partner.

Loneliness is a public health hazard that may be akin to smoking and obesity. Remember, though, how justified we are in socially isolating smokers and the obese because their behavior is so unhealthy.


Category: Newsroom

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10 Responses to Linkluster Government Retirement Plan

  1. fillyjonk says:

    The other thing with deeming loneliness a “public health hazard” is that then introverts get forced into social crap they might not want to do, “for their own good.” Or people who live alone and are perfectly happy in that fact are pressured to take on roommates…

    • greginak says:

      I don’t’ think it is about forcing happy but more solitary people into things they don’t want. It’s that being lonely, as opposed to by myself and just fine, can be harmful. People are social creatures, certainly there are various gradations of that, but the lack of others acutely painful. In prison solitary confinement is usually seen as the worst punishment. It shouldn’t be a surprise that isolation has bad effects.

      fwiw, i’m a pretty introverted person.

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    Left lane snails: Other day I ran across a guy driving 35 on the interstate in the middle lane. He had is hazard flashers going, but still… right lane bub, and stay there.

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    Holy crap, how do you fit 100,000+ people in a square mile?

    • Michael Cain says:

      Lots of online pictures of Dhaka — it’s not a first-world lifestyle. Among other things, some of the world’s most polluted air and water.

      The author is wrong — there are very much engineering limits on density. Tell me how much volume is acceptable. I can only build so high at reasonable cost. Then start subtracting out for parks, natural light ingress, power generation, water and waste treatment, warehousing of food and furniture and all that, manufacturing, and on, and on. NYC and San Francisco have “fake” densities in the sense that they depend on a lot of services and production that are done outside the city limits.

    • Brandon Berg says:

      Assume 400 SF living space per person, which is really not that bad. That’s 40,000,000 for 100k, which is about 1.5 square miles. Cover half the area in two-story buildings and half in one-story, and you can for everyone in.

      Of course, you can’t just pack the whole square mile solid with residential buildings, so use 15-story highrises, and you can pack everyone’s home into a tenth of a square mile, leaving room for streets, business, etc.

      As a point of reference, Manhattan’s density is over 70k per square mile, and they have that huge park, plus a bunch of offices for people who commute in.

      There are parts of Hong Kong with density greater than 100k. The bottleneck seems to be sidewalk space. They’re packed solid on weekends.

      • Brandon Berg says:

        Supposedly there were more than 30,000 people living in the Walled City of Kowloon, which had an area of just over 0.01 square miles, for a density of over 3 million per square mile. That was literally just a bunch of high-rises packed together tightly with some alleyways in between.

    • Oscar Gordon says:

      Perhaps a better question is how do you pack 100K people into a square mile without them living in squallor or complete gridlock?

  4. Kirk says:

    Those loneliness articles always bug me. They never provide any real solution to the problem. Though this one mentioned awareness programs in the UK, are lonely people really unaware that they’re lonely?

  5. Michael Drew says:

    Whatever else attacking an opponent’s hand size, and it’s various implications, is, it certainly seems to be a good way to crater your own campaign.

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